SAB Foundation Social Innovation Awards

The SAB Foundation Social Innovation Awards is a challenge prize for sustainable social innovation that addresses a challenge faced by our beneficiary groups - women, the youth, persons with disabilities and persons in rural areas.

It offers a prize for sustainable innovation, either a product or process that addresses a challenge faced by its beneficiary groups. Emphasis is placed on innovations that are scalable and able to be commercialised. This is regardless of the source of these innovations or whether they are championed from within the target group of beneficiaries.

The target group of the SAB Foundation will stand to benefit as a results of the implementation or expansion of these "pro-poor" innovations, a process that will be directly encouraged and developed through the SAB Innovation Award.

Key Investment Principles and Criteria

The beneficiaries of the social innovation must be black women, youth, people with disabilities and/or people in rural areas. Finalists must be 85% or more black individuals, or black-owned and managed organisations.

Eligibility Criteria

The SAB Foundation Innovation Awards will be open to any innovation solution that offers a credible prospect of meeting a demonstrable social and/or economic need evidenced by the SABF's target low-income beneficiary groups (women, the youth, persons with disabilities and persons in rural areas).

Entries are welcomed from (and not limited to) South African individuals, innovators, entrepreneurs, NGOs, corporate foundations, CSI professionals, consulting firms, university departments. Entrants may enter as individuals on their own, or as members of a team, in which case one individual team leader shall complete the application form.

The innovation entered must be the original work of the applicant and a true innovation and/or a significant improvement on an existing technology, product, service, and production method or business model.

Product innovation covers innovations in both goods and services, which can be divided into new or improved products. A new product has different characteristics and intended uses than existing products. It may use new technologies, knowledge and products or a combination of these. An improved product is an existing product whose performance is significantly increased; in terms of either increased output or a reduction in cost.

Process innovation is the adaption or creation of improved ways to deliver a product or service. It could come from changes in knowledge, perception and understanding.

For poverty reduction, process innovations can increase the level of service delivery to beneficiaries, or enable practitioners to reach previously untouched groups or individuals.

The innovation solution must have progressed past the "blue-sky" thinking stage: there must be some evidence of investment by the applicant. This means that applicants must be able to show proof that prior to applying, they have spent time and/or money developing the innovation: planning, developing & testing prototypes, market & industry research, developing a business plan.